The JK Board of School Education on February 21 inaugurated the Jammu and Kashmir Knowledge Network hub (JKKN) in its premises at Jammu.
The new initiative is seen by students as a platform wherein they can connect with their mates through internet and share their personal as well academic experience while sitting in their classrooms. The initiative aims to connect school children of J&K to world of knowledge through internet.
On February 21, when the JKKN hub was launched, the students from various schools were connected online through internet and they held online interaction with the education minister wherein they expressed their happiness as well shared their hardships they face in government schools.
As a participant in the function I could feel that the government has raised the level of expectations among the students while taking such initiative in government schools.
“Earlier, we were used to study in traditional classrooms but now we share our experience with students of other schools, within as well outside state. At times we listen to online lecturers delivered by internationally recognized academics,” one of the students of Thana Mandi shared with education minister during the online interaction.
The happiness was visible on the faces of students of government schools, which is rarely seen on their faces. Very rare students get opportunities to train their hands on new technologies or new facets of education.
But, the JKKN is aimed at establishing a strong and a robust network which will be capable of providing secure and reliable connectivity among government schools.
Under this new initiative, more than 200 schools have been connected with internet and application for 2-way interactive lectures from across the world.
JKKN has been launched with an aim to provide quality education to maximum number of students including those enrolled in schools located in remote locations.
The BOSE has a key role to play in it as it will be creating a storehouse of all the lectures and interactions delivered online through JKKN and later can be replicated to other schools as well.
The lectures delivered through JKKN will be recorded and stored as e-resource (either online and/or offline) for future use in schools.
If the new initiative is taken seriously by the government, it can bring a positive change in transforming the education in government schools. It can also bring government schools at par with private schools who fleece students for providing these facilities.
The new initiative provides quality education to students in subject specific areas besides helps in capacity building of teachers from experts and online resources available throughout the world.
JKKN can revolutionise the education sector in government schools for which a need has been felt in the state. The main focus of JKKN is to emphasize on subject specific topics covered under syllabi and courses of studies in consonance with NCF-2005, career counselling, lectures, motivational sessions, exposure to outside world and many more similar activities.
The main target under the new initiative is primarily students, besides sessions for teachers are organized. JKKN aims to completely change the existing conventional teaching-learning mechanism in schools.
JKKN has now been introduced to government schools and government is expected to come up to the expectations of the students who are dreaming high about this initiative.
The education minister during his online interaction with the students on inaugural made several promises to the students for providing requisite facilities to make this initiative a success story for the school education department.
While government is lagging behind on other fronts in education sector, let authorities make optimum use of JKKN to bring education sector at par with other states.